Growing up in New Jersey, telenovelas and variety shows connected me to my family and Dominican culture—even when they didn’t tell our exact story. When I think about growing up Dominican in New Jersey, I don’t immediately remember the big milestones or major events. Instead, I remember the television glowing in the corner of the room while dinner was being prepared in the kitchen.
Spanish came through the speakers, competing with the everyday clatter of pots and pans, overlapping family conversations, and the occasional lighthearted argument over who got to choose the channel. More often than not, the household vote was a toss-up between Univision and Telemundo, the undisputed anchors of Spanish-language broadcasting in the United States.
I remember Marimar, starring Thalía and Eduardo Capetillo—who easily claimed the title of my first television crush—playing on the screen day after day. I remember eagerly anticipating weekends with Sábado Gigante and host Don Francisco, a variety show that my family looked forward to all week long. I remember watching Selena perform and endlessly replaying her interviews and music videos because my family never seemed ready to let those vibrant moments fade away.
There was something profoundly powerful about hearing Spanish spoken naturally in our home. Even when the storylines on screen weren’t specifically Dominican, they still felt deeply familiar. The expressions, the intricate family dynamics, the music, the humor, and the larger-than-life personalities all reflected pieces of a culture we instinctively recognized and embraced.
Watching Marimar with my family was never a quiet, passive experience. My mom would inevitably shake her head at a character’s terrible decision, and someone else in the room would immediately chime in, shouting, "¡Te dije que eso iba a pasar!" Within moments, the room would fill with a chorus of overlapping voices, booming laughter, gentle teasing, and spirited debates over who was right and who was wrong.
It was the exact same energy I knew so well from my extended Dominican family gatherings: adults laughing heartily at old stories and passionately debating everything from family gossip to whatever scandalous plot twist was currently happening on television. Someone was always calling out from another room, and somehow, miraculously, everyone in the house was part of the conversation. The show didn’t tell our exact story, but watching it alongside my mother and the rest of my family simply felt like home.
Marimar wasn’t a Dominican production, and Selena was Mexican American, yet culture doesn’t always travel exclusively through direct representation. Sometimes, it arrives through pure, undeniable recognition.
At the time, I didn’t think of those ordinary evenings as an intentional act of cultural preservation. I was simply a kid growing up in New Jersey, watching television with my family like millions of others. Decades later, however, I realize those routine, everyday moments were silently teaching me who I was and where I came from.
For countless immigrant families across the United States, broadcast media functioned as much more than mere entertainment. It served as a vital bridge between the world our parents left behind and the rapidly changing American landscape we were growing up in. For my Dominican family, these networks helped us hold on to our native language, traditional music, shared humor, and an unbreakable connection to our homeland while we built a stable life in the United States.
That was the unique magic of appointment television. We watched because a show happened to be on at that exact hour, and it organically became part of our family conversation because we had all experienced it together. I could easily navigate English at school all day and then come home to a living room completely filled with Spanish, comfortably growing up in New Jersey while still seeing vibrant pieces of Latin America and the Caribbean illuminated on our television screen. I didn’t have to choose between being Dominican and being from New Jersey—I could simply be both.
Even today, hearing the familiar opening notes of Marimar instantly brings back vivid memories of those evenings spent with my family. Yet, the way I watch television has fundamentally changed over the years. I no longer wait anxiously for a show to air at a specific scheduled time, nor do I gather with my entire family in the living room to debate what we are all going to watch together.
Now, I stream shows independently on my own devices whenever I have a spare moment. When something genuinely makes me laugh or reminds me of home, I still share it with my family, though the medium has shifted; it is now usually transmitted through a quick video clip or a meme in our shared family group chat.
The underlying connection remains strong, but it has undoubtedly taken on a different shape. When I was growing up, a telenovela, a mesmerizing musical performance on Sábado Gigante, or a catchy song on television could effortlessly become the centerpiece of tomorrow’s family conversation without anyone needing to plan it. Everyone had watched it; therefore, everyone had an opinion.
Today, in an era defined by endless choices, streaming algorithms, and highly personalized digital feeds, we may watch entirely different shows, follow completely different content creators, and discover culture in vastly divergent ways. Shared cultural moments have not completely disappeared, but they have certainly become far less automatic.
At the same time, Latino creators are no longer waiting around for traditional Hollywood or network executives to grant them representation; they are actively building that representation themselves. A Dominican kid growing up in New Jersey today can simply open their smartphone and instantly find a digital community that reflects their specific, modern experiences. I would never trade that unprecedented access or the newfound creative freedom that modern content creators enjoy.
Yet, there are times when I genuinely miss the communal feeling of knowing we were all watching the exact same thing at the exact same time.
While our media platforms have expanded exponentially—evolving from traditional telenovelas and weekend variety shows to TikTok, niche podcasts, YouTube channels, and on-demand streaming services—my fundamental desire for connection has not changed. I still find myself looking for something that reminds me of home, and more importantly, wanting to share that experience with the people who made my childhood home feel like home in the first place.
For those of us who grew up navigating life between two distinct worlds, culture is passed down through much more than just the historical stories we tell about where our families originated. It lives and breathes in our language, our treasured family recipes, our music, and the quiet, ordinary moments we spend together in each other’s company.
For me, that cultural foundation lives on in the cherished memory of a television glowing softly in our New Jersey living room, filling our home with the cadence of Spanish. I once thought those programs were simply harmless entertainment to pass the time. Now, I deeply understand that what truly shaped me wasn’t just what we watched on that screen, but the fact that we were watching it together as a family.
Today, we have more diverse ways to connect to our cultural roots than ever before in history. The ongoing challenge, however, is finding ways to keep those connections shared and communal. Culture is not merely something we passively consume on a screen; it is something we actively experience, remember, and pass down to the generations that follow.
